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The Fundraising Masterminds Podcast
69. 4 Key Elements to Utilizing Giving Tuesday Effectively [Year-End Fundraising 5 of 8]
00:20:40
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- [00:00]
A
You're listening to the number one podcast for nonprofit leaders getting your nonprofit fully funded. This is the Fundraising Masterminds podcast. They're all posting on Facebook, you know, give on Giving Tuesday. Well, Facebook, they're like, well, what can we do to make it easy to get people to fundraise on Giving Tuesday? We're gonna match 10 million to the first nonprofits that get donations on Facebook.
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B
Got it?
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A
Facebook kind of hijacked Giving Tuesday a few years ago. Okay, okay, let me explain what happen. Welcome back to another episode here at the Fundraising Masterminds Podcast. My name is Jason Galasinski, and with me, my co host, Jim Dempsey.
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B
Hi, everyone.
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A
How you doing this week, Jim?
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B
Oh, I'm doing great. It's a great week. I mean, here we are, the end of October. We're really getting into fall. You know, Halloween will be there whether you celebrate it or not. And then all of a sudden, it'll be Thanksgiving and Christmas. So it's a neat company.
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A
Started the Perfect Vision dinner mentorship program on Monday this week.
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B
Yes, sir.
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A
And if you're still kind of like, oh, I missed it, you know, it's like, well, get in touch with us. We might be able to squeeze you in. There might be just a little bit of room. Sometimes we make exceptions for last minute things, but we did technically start on October 28th.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And we had a really good first call. Hundreds of people on the call. Really good first. First lesson.
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B
It was amazing. It is spring. You know, we're working towards a spring dinner, in other words. Yeah. And that's always our busiest time.
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A
Yep. So anyways, this episode is called Four Key elements to Utilizing Giving Tuesday Effectively. It's our part five out of an eight part series.
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B
Right.
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A
And if you haven't listened to the first four parts, definitely go back and listen to those because we're building a case. The first episode was a big overview of the whole year end strategy.
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B
Right.
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A
And we talked about. We did a whole episode on the cause concept. We did a whole episode on the appeal letter. We did a whole episode on matching gifts. And now we're going to be talking about Giving Tuesday.
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B
Right.
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A
I can already hear people saying, oh, Giving Tuesday comes up every year. And I just. I just don't know what to do with it.
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B
Why do I even need to do this?
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A
Doesn't have to do with, like, Facebook or something. And the answer is kind of. I mean, it started before Facebook took over. The idea of Giving Tuesday originally was, hey, you know, we do a Black Friday sale.
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B
Right.
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A
You know, we Do Cyber Monday.
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B
Right.
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A
But we don't do anything for non profits. And really you, you know, we're, we're in the spirit of generosity, so why not make a day where you can highlight some giving opportunities, you know, and so it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it has been hijacked by some big corporations.
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B
Right.
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A
And you know, Facebook has tried to make it super easy for you to create a Giving Tuesday campaign and things like that.
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B
Because it benefits them.
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A
It benefits them. Yeah, yeah. And it, it really. Actually we're going to talk about Facebook and social media and how to use them or not use them on Giving Tuesday. So let's get how to utilize Giving Tuesday effectively. So first of all, you gotta understand the role of Giving Tuesday in the bigger context. So we have a cause concept for the year end.
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B
Right.
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A
It might be, you know, building a new school building for 100,000 or adding a gym or it might be getting an ultrasound or something.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But there's some bigger picture that we're trying to raise money for. And Giving Tuesday is typically, we want to focus on one element of the bigger thing.
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B
Right, right. It's not completely separate thing. That's, that, that's totally different from the overall year end appeal. It's a component of the year end appeal.
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A
Right. So for me, you know, reaching the heart of Zambia, we're running a school. It something might, a good example might be we're trying to add a school building. But for Giving Tuesday, we want to help, you know, raise money for the teacher's salaries.
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B
Right.
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A
For the school. Or, or it might be, you know, security. Security walls or building a. Well, right. For the school building.
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B
Right.
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A
Or something like that. So it' of the bigger picture, but it's not the full bigger picture. And so you gotta identify, you know, what specifically. And it's really important that you think about it in terms of smart goals.
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B
So specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.
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A
Right. And so that's really what you want to be thinking in terms of Giving Tuesday. You don't want to be thinking, you know, well, we just need to raise $20,000 towards our year end campaign budget.
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B
Just give whatever you can give.
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A
Yeah, no, it needs to be something spec specific. So definitely come up with that first. And then once you've got that, the biggest thing is promoting.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Giving Tuesday. Now normally with, you know, a lot of stuff we do, we, we use direct mail a lot because direct mail is very relevant.
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B
Right.
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A
But Giving Tuesday is one of those things that is kind of digital.
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B
It's an exception.
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A
It's one of those things that's almost like a flash sale or something. Right. So it's not like you're gonna get, you know, a direct mail letter.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
Like on that day. And it's, you know, because the deadlines.
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B
Are so tight, you try and expect for a letter to go out and especially go out throughout the country.
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A
Yeah.
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B
That's why email marketing is so much better.
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A
So, Jim, it's really important that we think of the Giving Tuesday campaign as kind of like this flash sale type thing. There's urgency and. And you might be thinking, well, what. How is that? How is just creating a random day, you know, and raising a certain amount of flash sale? Well, we're going to talk about that in our next point, which is matching gifts. Um, but for now, just think of it as it's a flash sale. It's a limited time only, so it's only on this day.
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B
Right.
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A
And so there's a lot of the promotion that goes around that needs to be centered around kind of an urgency factor. So typically I would want to send an email like the Monday of Thanksgiving saying, hey, just a reminder, Giving Tuesday is coming up and we've got a special giving opportunity for you. But you're not unveiling what that is.
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B
Right.
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A
Typically you probably send out another email for Thanksgiving. So you don't want to mix, you know, you just want to say, we're thankful for you on Thanksgiving.
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B
Right.
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A
Then you'd send out another email on Saturday. And I would not recommend sending one on Friday because of all the Black Friday sales stuff.
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B
Right. Too distracting.
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A
Yeah, send one out. Send another reminder out on either Saturday or Sunday of just, hey, just a reminder, Giving Tuesday is coming up. And if you want to give a little teaser.
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B
Right.
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A
But this is a good opportunity to put a video in the email. Keep the emails simple.
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B
Right.
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A
Just like a, you know, you don't have to do a video, but. But you could do just a quick 30 second, hey, just a reminder, we got Giving Tuesday coming up and we really going to need your help this year. We've got some special opportunities for you coming up on Tuesday only.
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B
Right.
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A
You know, and then. So you're kind of leading them in. Then you're going to do a final email Monday. Now on the. The Monday before is when you're probably going to want to say what it is.
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B
Yeah. You know, now it starts. Momentum starting to pick up.
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A
Yeah. So. So now you're going to want to say, hey, the Giving Tuesday opportunity that we're gonna have on Tuesday only is that we're gonna try to raise $50,000 towards the school at Zambia. And that's going to include two wells and a teacher. And this is gonna be a huge opportunity just for giving Tuesday only because we've got a triple match. If you give of a gift of $100, it's going to be matched up to $300. If you give a gift of $500, it's gon, you know, 1500. So we're going to have a triple match all the way up to $25,000 just for giving Tuesday.
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B
Right.
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A
Now normally, and this is element number three, matching gifts. Right. So first element is having a good cause concept. Second one is promoting giving Tuesday.
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B
Right.
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A
The third one is having matching gifts. Now we already have a matching gift for the year end. We talked about that last week. But for giving Tuesday, the way that we can make it urgent or have a flash sale is by compounding matching gifts. So if you can get another matching gift just for giving Tuesday or even a third matching gift, you know, that's even better, right? Yeah. So one thing with the match is we like to qualify matches. Right. So one way that you can kind of challenge people to get that match, to get that triple sale is that you got to give a gift of a certain amount.
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B
Yes.
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A
So we Recommend, you know, 650amonth would qualify you for a match on giving Tuesday.
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B
Well, and the reason why $600 is that typically $500 is generally your medium amount in there, medium sized gift. And so if you can get someone to go from 500 to 600, you're really leveraging that money and getting people to give more than they normally give.
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A
Right. But that's really, this is really the secret sauce for getting. It's definitely the triple match. Right. Because it's just for today. It ends after today. And you know, you've got that urgency.
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B
Right.
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A
Because that scarcity. And that's what you need to create momentum.
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B
Right.
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A
So going back to the step two in promotion, you want to be letting people know this now, you know, Monday night. And then you want to be thinking of giving Tuesday as almost like a live event.
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B
Right.
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A
Almost like you're live streaming, but you're not really live streaming. But you want to think of it as an as it's going to take your whole day in thought.
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B
Yeah. And so really, Jason, you're going to set aside all day because this, this is an important thing.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Either you or your staff, somebody who's.
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A
Running the program, one person in your organization needs to take ownership over giving Tuesday and think about it like, yes, you can schedule the email. I would, I would recommend scheduling an email for 6am yeah. Like basically giving Tuesday starts now. Here's the opportunity, here's how much we're trying to raise and if you give today only, your gift will be triple matched.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Double matched.
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B
Yeah. Because this is a, this is a dynamic event, a dynamic day. It's not static. One of the things that you've mentioned so many times, which I'm sure you're going to mention in just a minute, but that we'll want to have a thermostat or thermometer that is going to let people know. So that's got to be maintained. I mean, people will probably be going back and forth throughout the day to say, well, how they do it. So if you have a staff member started out and you are 10% at 9:00am and the staff member doesn't get back to until 5:00 in the afternoon and refreshes, well, you've, you potentially, you've lost a lot of income through that day.
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A
So this is a live event. Right. And we want to be kicking it off at 6am and we want to be giving updates throughout the day. So this is part of promoting, you know, and the way that I tend to think of it is you just put yourself in kind of a layperson's shoes, someone who's casually interested or maybe knows about you a little. Right. But they're, they're busy. They just got back from, from Thanksgiving. They're tired, they're getting back into work. They're not thinking about your organ necessarily. Right. So this is why you need to be reminding them before and then reminding them on their way home.
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B
Right.
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A
And then reminding them Monday night.
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B
Yes.
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A
And then on Tuesday morning you say giving Tuesdays. Today we've got a great opportunity for you.
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B
Yeah. Racers, start your engines.
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A
Yeah. And then we want to send out a few more updates periodically throughout the day. Okay. Now don't worry about overwhelming your audience. I, I think they get it that it's giving Tuesday. Right. So you're not going to, you're not going to overwhelm them. They, they're going to understand and there's.
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B
Other ministries doing the same thing.
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A
Right. But I would recommend that you send out an update midday, another update towards the end of the day, like dinner time, another update as you're going to bed. And then I would finally, towards the end, like the last 30 minutes, I would do like a live Stream on social media from like 11:30pm all the way up to midnight.
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B
Right.
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A
And kind of make that like a final. Like we're doing a final push and it's live, and we're. We're counting on you, and we need you to come through and. And, you know, and that's. That can be something that you can. You can really bring in staff and you can make it a thing. You know, it doesn't have to be you by yourself in a closet, you know?
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B
Now, Jason, I'm thinking about the listener, and they're going, wow, this seems like a lot to manage. How. I don't have any software. What. What do I do to manage this?
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A
It's really not that hard. I mean, you might be listening to it and thinking, wow, that sounds like a lot of work. But I mean, really, the emails, you know, you're sending out, you know, an email reminding people about givingtuesday, that you can recycle a few times, right? You're sending out, you know, an email about the opportunity that you can recycle emails and then the emails periodically throughout the day. Yeah, you're just saying. You're just giving a quick update.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Hey, we're 35% there.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, just click here to. To give, you know, and then like, later on, hey, we're 55% there. We're almost there. We need your help. Click here. Yeah, you. Um. But yeah, to. To get to your point, that's element number four is that we need to use software beyond just your normal giving campaign page.
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B
Okay. What's out there, Jason?
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A
Well, there's a bunch of options out there, but the easiest one to set up by far is called crowdfunding. It's by a company called FundEasy.
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B
All right?
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A
And crowdfunding just is a free, simple landing page that has a thermometer, has a goal, has. It shows you the real time amount. You can customize it with your banner, you can put in a description. You can put in, like, video and a little blurb about your organization. So it's. It's nice because it's customizable. It doesn't have a lot of branding and it doesn't cost anything. You just hook it up to your stripe account and you're good to go.
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B
How do you get that? How do you get to that fund Easy software?
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A
Yeah, we'll put a QR code on the screen. Just scan the QR code, or just go to fundeasy.com they have three products. The third product, crowdfunding, is Their free product. And again, it's perfect for Giving Tuesday because you don't need all the fancy dancy, you know, tools.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You just need a simple page with a goal, real time information and how much you've raised, and a thermometer, and that's all you need.
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B
Now, Jason, one of my colleagues, recommended using Facebook. I mean, he said it was simple, but that's all he said. What are your thoughts?
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A
Facebook kind of hijacked Giving Tuesday a few years ago. Okay, let me explain what happened.
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B
Okay?
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A
There's a, there, there's a lot of, you know, softwares out there that, you know, have Giving giving pages and they're all posting on Facebook. You know, give on Giving Tuesday. Yeah, well, Facebook couldn't, you know, allow other people benefiting. Right? So they're like, well, what can we do? Right, to make it easy to get people to fundraise on Giving Tuesday. So they created this like matching gift thing. I think it was Bill Gates or I don't, I don't know who it was that funded it, but, you know, they was Zuckerberg. It might have been Zuckerberg. I don't remember. But typically every year Facebook has a matching gift thing that they, they draw people in with a big number. It's like, it's like 10 million or something. We're gonna match 10 million to the first non profits that get donations on Facebook.
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B
Got it.
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A
And from what I've heard and from past years is that $10 million gets eaten up in like 30 seconds. Oh, wow. Because very beginning of the day, because everyone's doing it and it's like. So they start at like 8:00am or something.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And then like 30 seconds later, it's just like, it's gone. And then you have the whole day.
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B
Is profit for them, right?
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A
Yeah. And the problem, the problem is is that the way that Facebook does is they don't give you the names of anybody who donates.
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B
Seriously.
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A
Right. So people are donating, Right. And they keep everything anonymous. So to make things even worse.
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B
Well, at least they're giving it to you quick.
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A
No, to make things even worse, they don't give you the money for like two or three months.
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B
What? Are you serious?
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A
They have to process the thing. I don't know what they do with it.
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B
Oh, man. Now, okay, then if those are some of the downsides, what does the fund easy do then?
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A
Right? So with Fundeasy, you get customization. Okay. You, you know, people can, you can use Facebook or Instagram, but they just click into, you know, a Different website.
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B
Right.
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A
They can see in real time how much they've raised and then when they click to give, you know, they're filling out their name. Their email for sure.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You can make optional their, their address, but I would recommend having it there as, you know, maybe not required, but if they fill it out. Great.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And their phone number, same thing. You don't have to require it. You can choose how you want.
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B
I mean, email this.
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A
Usually I say name and email is most important and then leave the other fields on there, but just don't make them required. But a lot of times people will fill it out.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so the benefit is that you get the money within 24 hours and you get the contact information, which is really what you need.
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B
That's the most valuable.
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A
That's the most valuable because you want to be able to follow up and get to know these people. So anyways, all these four elements combined. Right. Let's just review them really quick. So we're having a good cause concept that's, you know, a portion of your overall strategy. We're promoting Giving Tuesday. Thinking about it like a flash sale. We're using matching gifts to stack on Giving Tuesday. That's only for givingtuesday. We're either going to double or triple match just for that day. We're going to continue to remind people throughout the day. And then fourthly, we're going to use a program like Crowdfunding by Fundeasy to have that real time page with the thermometer interactive. Now one thing I like about the crowdfunding thing that's related to the real time email thing is I like to, during the actual giving campaign, because crowdfunding looks really nice. The way that they present the data of. Here's your goal, here's how much we've raised in the thermometer. Just, it looks really pretty.
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B
Okay.
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A
And so you can actually take a screenshot of that section and just drop it into your mailchimp campaign. And I do that a lot, like literally. And it kind of feels more real time, you know, so you're getting an email like 35% raise and you just take a screenshot, plop it in there and then send it out.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, and then later on in the evening at, you know, 8:00 at night, take another screenshot, drop it in.
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B
Give it a 5%. Yeah.
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A
And then when you get finally get to the 11 o'clock at night, believe it or not, people are still up. They're usually scrolling Facebook or doing something, you know, on the screen. And, and so that you're gonna get that final reminder puts, puts it over the top. You know, we're only 15 away.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And I would focus on the amount left that you need. Not we're 80% there because that makes you think, oh well, they did pretty good. They're 80%. Yeah.
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B
They don't need my money.
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A
I would say, you know, towards the end of the day, start pivoting towards we only need 15%, we only need 10%, we're 6% away. You know, stuff like that. Sending screenshots. And again, on those final emails that are going out, you could say, join us on Facebook Live. We got a Facebook Live going on right now. You can get real time updates. This is completely optional. You don't have to do this. But I'm just saying you can build up some hype. Right, Right. And you can put a link in that final email. Join our Facebook Live. We're going to be giving real time updates. We've got our executive director online and, and you could just have, you could have your development director, your executive director on there talking about the vision, talking about the impact, talking about the needs and just, you know, and then as donations are coming in.
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B
Right.
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A
Just saying, we just got another gift from Susie to Gabe. A hundred dollars that was just matched to 300. Oh, thank you, John. You know, you just, you know, dropped in another 600 that was matched to this much. And so, you know, you can, you can do that. And that just makes it feel really exciting. So, so anyways, I hope that helps.
- [19:51]
B
Oh, very much.
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A
Four elements of Giving Tuesday. Very practical things that you can do. So we're 35 days away. Go ahead and scan that QR code. That'll take you to fundeasy. You can set up your Fund Easy account right now and you can be up and running within five minutes. In fact, Fund Easy actually has Giving Tuesday campaign banners all ready to go.
- [20:10]
B
Nice.
- [20:11]
A
You can, if you don't have your own banner, you can just select one of their pre configured ones and you're good to go. I hope that this was a helpful episode to our listeners and if you enjoyed it, just let us know in the comments. Be sure to subscribe and we'll see you next time.
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B
Take care.